President Donald Trump called a meeting of Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers to examine allegations of election impropriety, saying that the state’s election result should be overturned and repeating his baseless claims that his loss to Joe Biden was illegitimate.
“It’s a very sad thing for our country to have this and they have to deliver the results,” Trump said, speaking through a phone to the microphone for one of his attorneys, Jenna Ellis. “It would be easy for me to say, ‘oh, let’s worry four years from now.’ No. This election was lost by the Democrats, they cheated, it was a fraudulent election. “
Trump continues to insist that he won, even after key states, including Pennsylvania, have already certified their results, essentially securing Biden’s victory. Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney who sat next to Ellis at the hearing, has been leading the far-reaching legal effort in several states to reverse the results of the November 3 election.
Trump had planned to travel to the hearing in Gettysburg on Wednesday, people familiar with the matter said, but canceled the trip earlier that day. The visit had never been formally added to its public agenda and the White House declined to comment. The hearing included a series of witnesses who raised suspicions or accusations or irregularities, with few details.
Giuliani’s efforts have gained little traction, and widespread mockery, and the president’s support for the job, risked further tarnishing his legacy.
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Trump filed a series of complaints Wednesday, many of which his campaign has not backed up with evidence. Trump also acknowledged that an aide warned him that a judge is unlikely to simply overturn an election.
“Our very good attorney said, well sir, that’s a great statement for a judge to overthrow an election. I said, really? Trump said during the hearing, then added: “Why wouldn’t they annul an election? Certainly write it down in your state, because we have other states that are just as bad. “
He said he was confident that he would be declared the winner if the case ended before the proper judge.
“We have all the evidence, we have all the affidavits, we have everything. All we need is for a judge to listen properly without having a political opinion or having another kind of problem because we have it all, ”Trump said.
In Pennsylvania, where Biden won by more than 80,000 votes, Trump supporters have complained that observers in Philadelphia were not allowed to be closer to the workers who were counting the ballots, and that poll workers went too far to the allow “cure” or fix discrepancies on mailed ballots, but have not presented evidence of widespread fraud.
Ellis encouraged Pennsylvania lawmakers to reverse the results.
“You have a variety of options in front of you,” he said. “You can call a special election. Still, you can direct the way of your constituents. It has a variety of constitutional options, but one option should not be to ignore it and certify a corrupt and hopelessly compromised election. “
Biden’s transition spokesperson, Kate Bedingfield, dismissed the Gettysburg event as a stunt.
“The election is over. Virtually everyone on Earth has accepted that truth except for Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani, ”he said during a call with reporters on Wednesday. “The Trump campaign has been mocked in every courtroom with its meritless and baseless demands designed to undermine the will of the American people. This is a sideshow. “
Former Pennsylvania Governor and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, a Republican, criticized Trump on Twitter.
Last weekend, a federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed a lawsuit that Giuliani personally argued after other attorneys working on the campaign’s lawsuits in the Commonwealth asked to be removed from the case.
Wednesday’s forum was announced as a legislative hearing, but the Legislative Committee on Budget and Finance voted this week against conducting an audit of the elections requested by the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania House, saying it would duplicate a review by the Department of State. The forum was held inside a hotel, with very few attendees wearing masks.
Giuliani and Trump allies have said that about 700,000 mail-in ballots counted in Philadelphia and Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, should be discarded because Republican observers stayed too far from the counting process to meaningfully monitor the fraud.
But the Republicans never provided evidence of actual fraud that would justify invalidating legally cast votes. While observers stayed behind distance barriers in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the state’s electoral code does not specify how close they are allowed and that county officials have discretion in setting the limit.
Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican, has said that Republicans were never excluded from the counting area as they alleged, and that there were no wrongdoing.
Trump’s lawyers presented “tense legal arguments without merit and speculative allegations” that were not supported by evidence, wrote US District Judge Matthew Brann in his opinion dismissing the lawsuit. Giuliani has agreed to appeal.
Trump has publicly fought to accept his electoral defeat, only this week agreed to give Biden’s team access to government resources as part of the transition process. And he has sought to appeal to lawmakers in Republican-controlled state governments to refuse to certify the results that show he loses to the former vice president.
Last week, he invited Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Speaker of the House of Representatives Lee Chatfield, both Republicans, to the White House. But they issued a joint statement after their meeting with Trump saying that “they had not yet been informed of any information that could change the outcome of the elections in Michigan.”
Those efforts also fell short in Georgia and Nevada, each of which advanced through the regular process of certifying election results. And Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, announced Tuesday that his state had certified the results and appointed representatives to the Electoral College.
Earlier this week, her campaign distanced itself from attorney Sidney Powell after she accused Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, of being bribed by an electoral systems company. Giuliani was mocked by tabloid newspapers and late-night TV hosts last week for holding a press conference during which he was sweating so profusely that hair dye seemed to drip down his cheeks.
“It is in everyone’s interest to have a full investigation of the electoral irregularities and fraud,” Giuliani said in a statement on Wednesday’s event. “And the only way to do it is with public hearings, with witnesses, videos, photographs and other evidence of the illegalities of the November 3 elections.”
Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano said he had requested the public hearing because voters in his state “lost faith in the electoral system.”
“Over the past few weeks, I have heard from thousands of Pennsylvanians about problems experienced at the polls, irregularities with the vote-by-mail system, and concerns about whether their vote was counted,” Mastriano said in a statement. “We need to correct these problems to restore faith in our republic.”
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